This invention relates to a method of operating a ticketing system. In particular but not exclusively the invention relates to a method of operating a ticketing system for a transport service.
Ticketing and check-in procedures of public transport providers are on the whole, implemented with paper documentation. Using the example of an airline journey, a passenger either through a travel agent or the airline books and pays for a journey and is issued with a paper ticket and/or boarding pass as proof of carriage. The ticket/boarding pass contains information identifying the passenger and the journey. The information on the ticket/boarding pass is verified at the airport by an airline employee before the passenger is allowed to board the flight. Commonly, an airline employee using a computer, which is connected to a database on which the passenger's reservation details are stored, manually verifies the information on the ticket/boarding pass. There are several problems with this process. For instance, manual verification can be slow and hence inconvenient to the passenger. Furthermore, the process relies on pre-printed paper tickets, which are tedious to deal with, and prone to being lost.
Some effort has been made to automate the check-in procedure at airports. For instance, some airlines now issue tickets or boarding passes, which have ticket information, stored on a magnetic swipe strip. This information is verified at the airport pre-boarding by swiping the card through a swipe reader, which automatically reads the information on the strip. Whereas, the use of swipe strips and swipe readers does speed up the check-in process it is not without its disadvantages. In particular, swipe card readers and also the printers needed to print the ticket/boarding pass with the necessary swipe stripe are expensive to install and cumbersome to use.